


A Little Bit Backstabby

by conceptstage



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-13
Updated: 2018-11-13
Packaged: 2019-08-23 05:42:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16612994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/conceptstage/pseuds/conceptstage
Summary: Beau has discovered her calling in life and it's giving Caleb nervous sweats.





	A Little Bit Backstabby

“What are you doing?” Caleb ask sleepily as he came down the stairs of his magically created magnificent mansion to find Beau lounging on one of the hammocks in the communal living area with a book open in her lap and her fingers writing furiously across the papers.

“Nothing,” she said nonchalantly. That was always a bad sign. Beau was never nonchalant about anything.

“That just means it’s something and you do not want to tell me.”

Beau rolled her eyes. “It’s a diary, what do you care?”

It was not a diary. She was very clearly doing math in her head, occasionally glancing up and then moving her mouth silently like she was counting. “I am suddenly very interested in your life. Let me see it.” He reached out for it and she moved deftly out of his reach. It’s not like he expected to catch her, this was Beauregard for fuck’s sake, but he was slightly disheartened by how she didn’t even look up from writing in her book to roll out of the hammock and land with her feet on the floor.

He caught a glimpse of some numbers and strange symbols that didn’t look like letters. He had seen something similar at the Gentleman’s place. “A ledger?” he asked. “What are you writing in a ledger for, what are you up to?”

Beau started moving swiftly across the room, still not looking up but avoiding each and every obstacle in her way with little issue. She did step on one of Jester’s wayward doughnuts but just scraped her bare foot off on the carpet and moved on. Caleb wasn’t too worried about that stain, it would be clean when he summoned the mansion next. He moved quickly to try and keep up with her but she shut the kitchen door in his face.

“Beauregard! Beaure-!”

“Oh, for fucks…” she opened the door and pulled him into the rustic, cabin kitchen, shutting the door once more behind him. The fire in the fireplace lit as he got near. “You’re going to wake up the entire house. Just shut up and I’ll tell you. But you can’t tell anyone else.” Caleb hesitated and looked at her dubiously. She huffed and rolled her eyes. “It’s nothing bad, or evil, or whatever. It’s just a little dangerous and backstabby. Not backstabby against the group, just someone else we know.”

Caleb watched her carefully and then glanced at the book. She was more than halfway through it. If it was a ledger, it was something serious. He had to know she wasn’t getting herself into something she couldn’t fight her way out of. “Alright,” he said. “I won’t tell anyone else until it puts them in direct harm.”

“Fair enough. I’m kind of… stealing from the Gentleman.”

Caleb thought for a moment he felt his heart stop. “You’re what?!”

“Not like, actual money from his coffers or anything. And not wine, either, I’ve learned my lesson. I’m not making the same mistakes I made going behind my dad’s back, these are all new mistakes.”

“So, when you say  _ stealing _ …”

The smirk that slithered up her cheeks chilled Caleb to the bone. “I’m building my own organization.”

Caleb didn’t know how you’d begin to go about that kind of thing. It must have taken years for The Gentleman to reach where he was. “H-How?” He asked finally.

Beau blinked. “Honestly, I wasn’t expecting that to be your first reaction. No panicking?”

“It’s coming, I have to work up to it.”

She shrugged and gently moved him into a chair to preempt his weak panic knees before taking the seat across from him. “It’s pretty complicated, it’s a lot of trial and error.”

“Error? Error sounds bad, what if he catches you, what if he kills you?”

“Right now I’m just small time. I’m working with a few people outside of his organization, running jobs before he can get to them, and charging half the money he charges. People have already started coming to us first.”

He suddenly remembered her super suspicious trip to the post office where she was gone forever and came back with a handful of letters. His original thought was that she had stolen them all again, but now he was sure that was correspondence about this. “People? Do you trust them?”

“Hell no. The only people in the world that I trust are in this house right now. But I do trust that they like money, and as long as they’re being paid they’ll do what I say. I keep them isolated, no one knows who else is in the organization, so that if they get caught by the law or by the Gentleman they can’t give anyone else up. I don’t have a stationary base of operations, they send everything to Allfield. If I know we’re going to be out of the way for a while I’ll sometimes ask Allfield to forward my mail where we’re going.”

“But they’d lead back to you, wouldn’t they.”

“Well, I don’t go by Beau, do I? For the same reason the Gentleman doesn’t go by his real name. The postal worker who gives me my mail is a young woman named Hannah. We saved her and her son from the gnolls, she won’t give me up if anyone comes asking.”

He thought it over and couldn’t think of any other holes she might have missed. “You’ve really thought this through, haven’t you? That’s unlike you.”

She rolled her eyes and flipped him off lazily. “I’ve been planning this ever since we first met the Gentleman. I’ve been scoping out his operation, to make sure I can stay off his radar long enough to get big enough to protect myself and my people.”

Caleb frowned. “I don’t like this.”

“I knew you wouldn’t. That’s why I didn’t want to involve you. I want you all to have plausible deniability if I get caught. Not that I expect to get caught. I’m really good at this, I surprised even myself.” She grinned pridefully and flicked her hair over her shoulder. “I’m the Queen of the Underground, man, and it feels good.”

“What name?” he asked suddenly. “Earlier, you said you didn’t go by Beau. What do you go by?”

“Her Highness,” she said, grinning. “I thought it was poetic, I’m going by a traditional title and I’m using my group to tear down the structures that created it.”

Caleb raised an eyebrow. “You think that's poetic? You’ve never written poetry, have you?”

“Hey, I am cultured as fuck, man.”


End file.
